It doesn't matter if you believe they came from God or not, the point of it is they are considered to be inherent rights that should not be infringed. Meaning that they are not given by the government but are rights you have in spite of the government, that's the big difference between the US and threat of the world and why it's such a big deal if something is unconstitutional. It's meant specifically to be a roadblock for tyranny. As a nation we were founded in such a way that people could believe what they want and express that belief in a non violent way so that people could exchange ideas rather than be jailed like others had in the past for being the wrong denomination of Christianity or being atheistic.

I do find it sad though that many Americans have reacted to this like "yeah the UK sucks go USA" but in more liberalized areas such as los Angeles you can be detained for hatespeech. Like recently there was a stream by far right youtubers there named Andy Warski, Baked Alaska, and Asian Andy, and it was basically a troll stream but all they did literally was film, talk, and have music and clips play occasionally. They didn't harass anyone and 3000 people watched as they were detained. Eventually they were let go and from what I've heard they were fined, but point is they didn't actually do anything technically illegal and yet they were officially detained while the police investigated a," hate crime" as the officers put it.

I think the problem is that in general, this thread seems to look at the problem based on an American perspective. Instead of asking for liberal/conservative (American) opinions on this, why aren't we asking what people in the UK and actually subject to the laws in question think? (Yeah, I know, lots of Americans on this forum, but still.)

[side note, Nazis suck, but so does this verdict.]

It's anecdotal but most of the ones I've talked with and watched have said the ruling is bs (good more mainstream examples again are the comedians I pointed out) but tbh I'd bet some are scared to speam out because more and more their freedom is taken away. Again the court ASSIGNED motive here despite explicit evidence to the contrary and this wasn't a trial by a jury either so it wouldn't matter so much what people generally thought anyway which is even more messed up.

I mean the prosecution literally said, "context doesn't matter, he said gas the hews so it's illegal" that literally means that this very post would be considered illegal just because it had that phrase in it. Context be damned.

I think the point that it has existed for a while is irrelevant though. That makes it no more justifiable or excusable and does nothing to remedy the fact that the law is being pushed further and further towards abuse. The law was put in place for a specific reason at a specific time and is now being used for a whole other reason which kindof gives credence to the idea that if you give a government power over one little aspect of your freedoms like speech it can snowball over time and slip further and further. Given a couple of decades if even that long and you'll see someone come to power who is completely fine with jailing opposition for "hatespeech." I mean you already have far left mainstream sources labeling right wing and left wing individuals who disagree with them as racist/sexist/nazis/etc (that's why people got so upset at the punch a nazi thing because they have seen people get lumped in together by publications before) so it's not that big of a stretch in my opinion.

I have signed NDAs. Nobody was violating my rights. I was not forced. The information was not classified. I wanted to know something, and they wanted me to not tell anybody, so I contractually agreed that I would not. Oddly, they would not take a pinky swear. Of course this was something Trump regularly did. What billionaire wouldn't?

The founders believed in rights given by God and wrote it into the founding documents. Whether we believe today, which a growing number of people don't, doesn't matter. We still benefit from their belief structure. As a result, nowhere else on the planet has freedom of speech, just the illusion of it, assuming they have it at all. Most people don't. Most people don't have a lot of things we take for granted in our 1% world. Granted, they did technically provide a mechanism to remove all people's rights, but they made the burden of doing that so mathematically difficult that it can't be done.

Now I know there's a reason you shouldn't blame others when you do something wrong, and that reason is: you might get caught and have to apologize to a bunch of dumb peasants.

I'm not talking about what Trump did as a billionaire. I'm talking about what he's doing as a representative of the US government. Requiring government employees to sign away their right to discuss matters with no national security relevance is extremely dubious on First Amendment grounds. Before anyone brings it up, I am aware that Clinton had campaign staffers sign NDAs (as did Trump), have no doubt she would have continued that practice in the White House, and don't consider that any more defensible than what Trump is currently doing.

You've also completely neglected to address how NDAs are better than college protests. If it's okay for the government to restrict your speech as a precondition for being hired, why is it not okay for a private (or even public!) university to restrict your speech as a precondition for studying or speaking there?

As for your last point, free speech is explicitly protected in the Constitutions of loads of countries comprising basically the entire developed world and even many developing nations. A decent number of them consistently rank ahead of us in speech and press freedoms, largely due to our use of the Espionage Act, which was especially common under Obama. We were arguably first, and we have the oldest active constitution, but there's absolutely nothing unique about having an explicitly guaranteed and difficult to amend right to freedom of speech.

And besides, it's not like any good dictator ever starts with trying to amend the constitution. That's how you get a revolution. It's much safer to just convince everyone that certain opinions aren't actually protected because they're so dangerous. If you're Erdogan, it's because they're dirty Gulenists or YPK members. If you're Maduro, it's because they're dirty American imperialists trying to stop the Bolivarian revolution. You don't even need to be a dictator if you're good at it. American demagogues have had a few good runs formally or informally restricting speech on communism, abolition, and other issues. Constitutional guarantees to protect free speech didn't stop any of that. Erdogan and Maduro have legislated their way around such restrictions now, but they crushed dissent long before they went after the laws.

The US Constitution is an immensely significant work, but it's still just a piece of paper. Its guarantees are only as strong as the system that supports it.

NDAs are not a restriction of freedoms. You choose to agree to them or not.

Other countries have free speech*. This isn't the first time recently we have seen those asterisks stand out. Half of Europe is arresting people for mean tweets, despite being unable to defend their citizens from actual crimes. Canadians are doing the same.

To repeal bills of rights, you need 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the states to agree and do so quickly enough before their citizens force them out of office. The math doesn't add up. It's like the people who say that Trump is going to be impeached for no reason. You're not getting to 2/3 of the Senate no matter how many mean things he says. Somehow, Nancy Pelosi has become the voice of reason on this point.

Now I know there's a reason you shouldn't blame others when you do something wrong, and that reason is: you might get caught and have to apologize to a bunch of dumb peasants.

It doesn't matter why Trump was hired. He is a politician now, and he acts as a member of the US government. He isn't magically exempted from constitutional restrictions because he wasn't a career politician.

You've once again refused to explain why NDAs are better than college protests. You choose to attend or speak at a college or not.

Most other countries (but not all) make exceptions for hate speech, yes. We've made plenty of exceptions as well, as I've mentioned, and retain plenty of them as they relate to morality and anything deemed "obscene." It's also technically illegal to state that it would a forceful revolution is desirable (used to prosecute communists in the past) or to materially support a boycott of Israel. There are plenty of cultural arguments to be made on both sides about why one is more acceptable than the other, but I don't see much of a difference. They're all just protecting speech until someone, whether that be judges or the general populace, has decided it's immoral or dangerous.

The US Constitution is difficult to change, but so are many others. Japan requires 2/3rds of both houses and a majority referendum, and as a result their constitution has never been changed. India, Germany, and Brazil, among others, have eternity clauses making it literally impossible to remove their rights guarantees. Many constitutions are hard to change.

You've once again refused to explain why NDAs are better than college protests. You choose to attend or speak at a college or not.

This wasn't directed at me, but I think a difference between NDAs and speaking your mind at a college is the fact that college is more or less considered a necessity to excel in life, whereas there's lots of great ways to get through life without signing NDAs. If every place restricted free speech just because NDAs exist we wouldn't have free speech at all. Renting an apartment is an agreement, what if they were altered to restrict speech? Then you couldn't even speak freely at home. It's illogical to point at NDAs to excuse blatant attacks on our God given rights.

So an update, I posted a video by comedian Jonathon Pie here that was his response to the trial where he jokingly said that he should be charged with hate-speech for voicing his views on the trial given the court decision that context doesn't matter, so at the end of the video he did a monty python style goose step to mock the court.

So fast forward to now, someone actually reported that video to the London police to see if they would take it seriously as a hate crime and they actually did. Saying if the person who reported it was offended by the video they could come to him or he could go to them and actually file a police report.

Also I don't know if I talked about it here, but right wing commentator/activist Lauren Southern has actually received a lifetime ban from Britain due to her views and she actually has pretty benign views in general. Just thought I'd add that to the conversation, so yes it does actually affect Americans as well.

In other free speech news, though it isn't in Great Britain, Malaysia actually enacted a new law recently that will result in prison time for reporting, "fake news."
I think fake news is an issue, but prison time for it is pretty damn harsh plus I don't like any government deciding what "fake news" is because that gives them way too much power. It's truly shaping up to be a scarier world and I hope people begin to wake up to these problems and become more active and vigilant in protecting free speech.

You've once again refused to explain why NDAs are better than college protests. You choose to attend or speak at a college or not.

This wasn't directed at me, but I think a difference between NDAs and speaking your mind at a college is the fact that college is more or less considered a necessity to excel in life, whereas there's lots of great ways to get through life without signing NDAs. If every place restricted free speech just because NDAs exist we wouldn't have free speech at all. Renting an apartment is an agreement, what if they were altered to restrict speech? Then you couldn't even speak freely at home. It's illogical to point at NDAs to excuse blatant attacks on our God given rights.

Shane's argument seems to be that NDAs are okay because they're consensual and you can get a different job, though. So by that token, you can attend a different college or rent a different apartment.

I haven't defended anything in this thread and I'm not about to start. I keep bringing this up because of the above contradiction, not because I personally believe either is better than the other.

Is Trump ever going to be a politician? I prefer Trump the businessman. The results speak for themselves. When he behaves like a politician, we get things like the swamp budget bill, which is as bad as anything Obama would have agreed to, that we have to pass to find out what's in it. It's not a compromise when everybody gets everything they want.

When you go to a college to speak, you are not agreeing for people to protest you. They may do so if they want and probably will, hopefully within the confines of the law (probably not), but that is their choice, not a guarantee as a condition of speaking.

Now I know there's a reason you shouldn't blame others when you do something wrong, and that reason is: you might get caught and have to apologize to a bunch of dumb peasants.

You've once again refused to explain why NDAs are better than college protests. You choose to attend or speak at a college or not.

This wasn't directed at me, but I think a difference between NDAs and speaking your mind at a college is the fact that college is more or less considered a necessity to excel in life, whereas there's lots of great ways to get through life without signing NDAs. If every place restricted free speech just because NDAs exist we wouldn't have free speech at all. Renting an apartment is an agreement, what if they were altered to restrict speech? Then you couldn't even speak freely at home. It's illogical to point at NDAs to excuse blatant attacks on our God given rights.

Shane's argument seems to be that NDAs are okay because they're consensual and you can get a different job, though. So by that token, you can attend a different college or rent a different apartment.

I haven't defended anything in this thread and I'm not about to start. I keep bringing this up because of the above contradiction, not because I personally believe either is better than the other.

You need to rent to live, you don't need to take a specific job requiring NDAs to live.

^ I don't prefer Trump the businessman, we'd probably have Clinton if he stayed that way and we'd soon be the ones going to jail for our Nazi dogs instead of UK citizens.

It's pointless to go on about left vs. right since you're stuck just making unsubstantiated statements about vague groups at each other. Besides that, Europe is particularly sensitive about the Holocaust and anything Nazi-related, and always has been. It's not incredibly shocking that this occurred, even if I believe it shouldn't have.

It's true that the United States likely has the freest speech on the planet, particularly because that freedom is granted in our federal Constitution and thus is protected much more harshly than it is in other countries. It's illegal here to ban Nazism or holocaust denial, for example, where most other western countries have done so (so no, Clinton would not be very likely to be able to send people to jail for Nazi dogs). That said, to say it is a right granted by God or some other divine power is a little silly, especially when our Constitution says nothing of the sort. It comes from what most other human rights come from; a nearly universal human consensus.

What we need to remember is that the government will always benefit from consolidating power. NDA agreements among government employees is just one method of doing this, and it's bad for the people to not be informed of what is happening in our government. Maybe they don't violate freedom of speech, but they sure feel like a loophole since spreading ideas and information should be one of the largest goals of free speech, and one of the most-protected aspects of it, in my opinion.

I mean that Trump is treating the country like a business, and the economic growth shows as a result. Arguably, much of this was easy and could have been done years ago, but it wasn't.

I would expect this in Germany but not the rest of Europe. The Germans don't screw around with this sort of thing. Many are embarrassed by their past, and they hate themselves and their country. Merkel could burn the flag and nobody would bat an eye.

Now I know there's a reason you shouldn't blame others when you do something wrong, and that reason is: you might get caught and have to apologize to a bunch of dumb peasants.

Nah, any display of Nazism or symbols of the Nazi Party is outright illegal not only in Germany, but also in Austria, France, Hungary, and Russia. I'm sure most other European nations feel quite a bit of animosity towards the Nazi Party, which is why I'm not too shocked that it happened in the first place. Especially in nations with a law as vague as the one violated in this case.